Telecoms tycoon Xavier Niel says he was spy who hacked ex-French president

One of the richest men in France claims to be a former spy who once hacked former President Francois Mitterrand.

The billionaire co-owner of Le Monde newspaper, Xavier Niel, 52, told the Parliamentary Channel that as a teen in the 1980s he worked undercover for the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance after he was caught hacking the French channel Canal+.

“I was a sort of part-time correspondent who would tell them regularly what we’re finding, what we were seeing, in our world of hacking,” Niel told the Channel, adding the security service asked him to help explain the new, technological cyber world to them

Niel claims he was tasked with hacking into the mobile telephone of President Mitterrand in 1986 as well as the car company Renault. In the process he found that Renault was being hacked by people from Australia who were downloading large chunks of data.